“Anyone who teaches courses in religion and literature will benefit greatly from this book. Hard Sayings promises
to be a major work in that field.” —Paul J. Contino, Seaver Professor of Humanities, Pepperdine University, and
editor of Christianity and Literature

“Thomas F. Haddox has refreshingly returned literary judgment to the act of criticism in this excellent study of six
late-modern novelists: Mary Gordon, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Marilynne Robinson, Muriel Spark, and John Updike.
Though they all purport to take Christianity seriously, Haddox shows that they often undermine their own intentions. The problem
arises not at the level of theological orthodoxy so much as in the making of fundamental literary decisions: about narrative
voice and tone, about direct and indirect discourse, about sympathetic and hostile characterization, as well as the openness
or finality of their endings. Whenever their work becomes theologically thin, it is because their literary method stumbles
on the scandalously ‘hard sayings’ of the Gospel.” —Ralph C. Wood, University Professor of Theology
and Literature, Baylor University

Hard Sayings: The Rhetoric of Christian Orthodoxy in Late Modern Fiction by Thomas F. Haddox examines the work of six
avowedly Christian writers of fiction in the period from World War II to the present. This period is often characterized in
western societies by such catchphrases as “postmodernism” and “secularization,” with the frequent
implication that orthodox belief in the dogmas of Christianity has become untenable among educated readers. How, then, do we
account for the continued existence of writers of self-consciously literary fiction who attempt to persuade readers of the
truth, desirability, and utility of the dogmas of Christianity? Is it possible to take these writers’ efforts on their
own terms and to understand and evaluate the rhetorical strategies that this kind of persuasion might entail?

Informed by the school of rhetorical narratology that includes such critics as Wayne Booth, James Phelan, and Richard Walsh,
Hard Sayings offers fresh new readings of fictive works by Flannery O’Connor, Muriel Spark, John Updike, Walker
Percy, Mary Gordon, and Marilynne Robinson. In its argument that orthodox Christianity, as represented in fiction, still has
the power to persuade and to trouble, it contributes to ongoing debates about the nature and scope of modernity, postmodernity,
and secularization.

Thomas F. Haddox is associate professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.